Lolita Firestone: A Supernatural Novel

By Mike Consol

The extraordinary story of a woman who travels to Sedona, Arizona and finds she has entered a different dimension, one in which her power and influence soars to almost unimaginable heights. Lolita Firestone catches so-called Red Rock Fever, makes Sedona her home, and establishes the Center for Cosmic Consciousness, a gathering place for the community's spiritually and religiously motivated. Alas, when small groups of black men from African countries on the U.S. terrorism watchlist come to Sedona to attend the Cosmic Center's weekend workshops, the CIA takes notice and embeds one of his agents among the Cosmic Center faithful. Equally alarmed are Preacher Elias Gentry, pastor of the Baptist Church of the Holy Apocalypse, as well as city business leaders. As her influence grows, Lolita Firestone's life takes on a new direction when a private meeting is requested by Omar Moustafa, an international playboy known as the Casanova of Cairo. What's more, he is son of Egyptian president and dictator Osama Moustafa, who is hellbent on restoring Egypt's historic glory by reconstituting the Pharaonic system of government, and he proposes the first Pharaoh in 2,000 years will be none other than his son, Omar, who is wildly popular in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. Unbeknownst to the president, however, son Omar has already fallen under Lolita Firestone's spell and impregnated her with the future Pharaoh of Egypt. A love story ensues. The Egyptian people and the wider Middle East, initially enthusiastic about bringing back the Pharaohship, are inflamed when they discover Omar has had American sex and chosen a U.S. resident to become their queen. From the red rocks of Sedona to the pyramids of Cairo, Egypt, Lolita Firestone becomes the embodiment of feminine power and spirituality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667885209

Book preview

Chapter 1

This is a story of Lolita Firestone, as told by Miles Zusman, her Boswell and unofficial biographer. It is also a geographic tale, one that could never have come to pass if not for its geographic pinpoint in the dead-center of the State of Arizona in a small city called Sedona, a town that many years ago was named after a young woman named Sedona Schnebly, wife of T.C. Schnebly, who together built a large two-story home that also served as the area’s first hotel and general store.

Lolita was a struggling Hollywood actress on the cusp of something astonishing. Miles was lost within his own fraudulent storyline, an aspiring politician who was preparing himself to run for a seat in the Arizona Legislature, though he dreamed of eventually becoming Governor and then U.S. Senator. He had served one term on the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania City Council and failed to win reelection.

He was full of secrets.

Both Miles and Lolita wanted to lead people.

They arrived as vacationers in Sedona, Arizona within one week of each other and Lolita instantly knew she was home and would never leave. Miles never seemed to be certain about anything.

###

It was an unspoken agreement among the 30,000 residents of Sedona to never speak ill of their community. Bad things happened to people who said bad things about Sedona. It was, after all, a land considered sacred by the Native Americans who once populated the area. Tribal ruins were still in evidence.

No one would have lived in Sedona if the sluggish National Park Service had acted more quickly or had been more lavishly funded by the United States Congress. With its amazing array of soaring red rock formations, it should have been a national park. By the time this dawned on the people running the National Park Service, too much of the territory was already in the hands of private landowners and the agency didn’t have a large enough checkbook to buy their properties and turn the red rocks into a national preserve. Over the years Sedona flourished on its own accord and turned into a community dominated by five groups: retirees, tourists, real estate agents, artists and those who believed in the New Age (a movement characterized by alternative approaches to Western culture, with an interest in spirituality, mysticism and all things holistic).

###

Miles Zusman had been masquerading as a Christian for years. To claim anything other than a feverish belief in the Bible and membership in the holy and apostolic church was a huge handicap for most American politicians. To be a member of any other religion — with the possible exception of Judaism — was an instant disqualifier. So was atheism. Especially atheism. So, he pretended to believe in God, and only one God, and only the Christian interpretation of God. To express anything else would have been political self-immolation.

He determined that Arizona was a place where the politically inclined could make a very quick impact and climb the well-oiled apparatus of the Republican Party Machine.

###

Lolita Firestone estimated that 50 percent of the 30,000 people living in Sedona fancied themselves healers, psychics or possessors of telepathic powers of some kind. It was a ready audience for the eventual Lolita Firestone/Miles Zusman compact.

###

Lolita and Miles met at a drum circle organized on the banks of Oak Creek, the community’s sole waterway. They beat rhythms and wailed Navajo and Hopi tribal hymns. After herbal tea was served, Lolita Firestone started talking and everyone started listening. The cult of personality had already begun to coalesce.

###

To the spiritually inclined, Sedona was famous for its seven Vortexes at geologic locations with names such as Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, Boynton Canyon and Airport Mesa. The Vortexes were electromagnetic high-energy centers that many locals considered portals into higher realms of consciousness.

Others considered the Vortexes figments of gullible people’s imaginations.

###

As has already been disclosed, Miles Zusman had secrets. It’s not just that he was an atheist pretending to be a Christian for political expediency, he was also a homosexual, and that fact was kept squarely in a closet as impenetrable as a bomb shelter. He was a self-loathing homosexual, too, which was one of two reasons why he always used the term homosexual rather than gay. The second reason was that, as an arch conservative, he wanted to publicly show his distaste for that sexual preference, which he considered perverse. To call a person or group homosexual was to cast a harsh light on their behavior and made plain where one resided on the political spectrum. What’s more, it gave Miles’ own homosexual nature additional cover. Not that he really needed it. The people around Miles had not an inkling of his true nature, because he was not the least bit effeminate. That would have been another death knell for his career as an elected official, especially now that he was in Arizona, which still regarded most forms of gay and lesbian sex as sodomy punishable by a stint in the state prison system. Arizona’s sodomy laws were rarely enforced, but they were kept in the penal code to communicate the revulsion with which the state’s residents regarded boy-on-boy and girl-on-girl sexual entanglements. You never knew when a sodomy law might be enforced as an excuse to incarcerate a person guilty of a higher crime or misdemeanor the authorities lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute.

The need to suppress something so integral to his life put Miles Zusman under considerable pressure. One momentary lapse of discipline and he would have to re-create himself in a new image. This made him exceptionally envious of heterosexuals who were free to express themselves with complete candor and authenticity. He was especially envious of the free-spirited Lolita Firestone. He had never meant anyone more self-assured.

Miles Zusman worked hard at maintaining the masculine behavior that did not come naturally to him.

###

Lolita Firestone moved into a small cabin in Oak Creek, where she communed with piles of books about the metaphysical nature of reality, a subject for which she harbored zero interest until she moved to Sedona. Her reading was interrupted by phone calls from an on-again/off-again boyfriend she left back in Hollywood. His name was Marco Choppo, and he was pleading for her return. As an act of devotion to their tepid relationship, Marco Choppo offered to come to Sedona so they could reunite.

She insisted that he not.

###

Miles Zusman started walking around the Uptown Sedona shopping and tourism district, introducing himself to people as their future republican congressman representing the 1st Congressional District of Arizona. Never mind that there was no election pending, or that Miles wasn’t a registered candidate, or that Miles had not even been an Arizona resident long enough to qualify to register as a candidate. Miles believed in projecting his aspirations and doing the early groundwork.

My collateral material hasn’t been printed yet, he told them, so I don’t have a brochure to give you.

###

Miles updated his residential real estate license for the State of Arizona and started selling timeshares. Sedona was full of timeshares with names such as Los Abrigados, Club Wynham, Hyatt Pinon Pointe and Arroyo Roble.

###

Each evening, as night fell, Lolita Firestone burned through stacks of books, mostly biographies of history’s greatest Far Eastern spiritual leaders, men who built great organizations or movements, such as Paramahansa Yogananda, Si Baba, Sri Chinmoy, Swami Satchidananda and D.T. Suzuki.

She was trying to learn the foreign language spoken by the New Age people she had begun consorting with in Sedona. They talked about things Lolita has never heard of (such as the transmigration of the soul and astral projection) and places she had never been (such as the causal plane and the Akashic Hall of Records). She was learning quickly. Soon she was on her feet, pacing the cabin, book in hand, reading highlighted passages aloud and memorizing the lines, much as she used to do with movie scripts for upcoming auditions.

She looked in the mirror and, for the first time, saw herself without illusion. Lolita knew in that moment she would discontinue drinking. No more bellinis. No more martinis. No more vodkas.

Hers was going to be a life about self-conquest.

###

Everything that Lolita Firestone did since arriving in Sedona, Arizona was done with higher energy and to greater effect. On the few occasions she ventured away from the red rocks and the Vortexes, the energy reduction was almost immediate. That is when Lolita Firestone realized she was living in captivity.

###

Sedona was small, so Lolita Firestone and Miles Zusman kept running into one another about town and would recess to a café for beverages. Lolita would start spouting metaphysics with all the brio of the actress she was.

Miles, the atheist, barely believed a word of it, and yet he was enthralled nonetheless because Lolita communicated with such conviction and clarity, the words flowing as though being played through a soprano saxophone. Miles fancied himself an excellent communicator and public speaker, but Lolita was a gifted one.

What were the chances that two people like us could meet at a place like this? Miles said.

Lolita replied, It was God’s will.

###

Lolita Firestone’s sleeping pattern changed. Her dreams took on a vividness and duration equal to her waking life. She slept twelve hours per night.

Equilibrium had been achieved.

Her dreams were populated by the very spiritual leaders whose books she had read and memorized so fervently. The mystics came to Lolita Firestone night after night and they were always accompanied by the totems of the New Age — candlelight, incense, babbling water fountains, tinkling windchimes, flute music. The more mystics she read the more mystics who made her acquaintance. Visitations were made by Sri Ramakrishna, Guru Nanak, Ram Dass and Alan Watts. They offered more than generalized wisdom, they told Lolita exactly what to say and do.

She began to relish slipping off to the Land of Nod by starlight as much as she relished waking to the brilliant desert sunlight.

###

Lolita Firestone started receiving urgent text messages from Sissy Meeks, her Hollywood agent, insisting that she return to Los Angeles. Meeks was alerting her that several directors had roles for her in some upcoming productions. The messages didn’t say movies or major motion pictures or mini-series, just productions. Her agent had a habit of leaving things nondescript, which experience had taught Lolita usually meant playing an extra in a television commercial or art-house flick that would never get released.

###

Miles Zusman would never get elected to Congress without a campaign war chest. He needed to raise donations. Even more important than that, he needed people to raise money for him. If that was ever going to happen, he needed the support of the state Republican Party. He drove 100 miles south to Phoenix, the temperature rising with each passing longitude, to introduce himself to the head of the Arizona Republican Party, a pudgy man named Charlie Quakenbush.

Dark and romantic notions about life in politics filled his head as he walked in the door. The chest was puffed because Miles Zusman had used self-talk to tell himself an endless stream of nice and impressive things about himself. It was a technique that worked well in the past en route to job interviews, public speaking events, blinds dates and such.

Quakenbush projected a cool air of authority. Aspirants came through his door daily, and Miles was just another warm body looking for a higher station in life. They all arrived with the same bleached teeth and air of presumption.

Miles sat at the chairman’s desk and placed his curriculum vitae on its surface. Quakenbush didn’t touch it, regarding it from afar. There were two framed portraits bolted to the office wall behind him. A scowling Barry Goldwater was over one of the chairman’s shoulders, a smiling Ronald Reagan over the other.

Miles Zusman announced his intentions.

What brings you to the State of Arizona? the chairman asked skeptically. The State of Pennsylvania has not gone for a Republican presidential candidate in a long time.

Miles understood the subtext, that what Quakenbush was really saying was, We don’t cotton to your kind here.

I’m a Republican, Miles said sprightly. I read my Bible every day before the sun rises, he lied. I have big dreams, and not just about being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. I want to be the Governor of Arizona one day.

The chairman slouched to counteract this visitor’s excessive exhilaration. Nothing about Quakenbush suggested enthusiasm. This is what happens in a state where Republicans win seats without even trying.

Miles nudged his CV across the desktop, closer to the party chairman, as if to lend credence to this ambition. Quakenbush still wasn’t engaging with the document.

Aiming to save the moment, Miles launched into one of his political raps, emphasizing small government, low taxes and mass incarceration of suspect members of American society, but the effervescence was washing away from his voice. His tone had gone flat working on dead.

###

Marco Choppo was an eccentric, highly emotional trust-fund baby from a wealthy Milan, Italy family that made its fortune in the garment and sunglasses business. Marco liked doing fun and interesting things and had the time and money to afford them since he didn’t have (or need) a job because his trust fund disbursed thousands of dollars per month into his checking account to provide for his sustenance and amusement. His sense of adventure was one of the things Lolita cherished about Marco Choppo. What she deplored was that Marco was drama personified, and Hollywood was full of drama-addicted people of both genders, and she didn’t need any more of that in her life.

Marco Choppo cried a lot. Women like when men cry because it shows they’re sensitive, until they start crying too much, then they’re just a melodramatic mess. He cried after orgasms. The man was a fully exposed nerve.

Lolita insisted that Marco’s life was too unstructured and he needed too many diversions to keep himself amused. He clung to Lolita for the same reason as Sissy Meeks — because he believed in her charismatic acting talent and was convinced she was destined for stardom on the Silver Screen. That would be his ticket to the Hollywood lifestyle, not as an actor or director, just as a hanger-on. Attending the awards ceremonies and movie premieres would be plenty enough for Marco Choppo. All the fun and none of the work.

Lolita kept breaking up with him. He kept wooing her back.

When he wasn’t being melodramatic, Marco was fun. This wasn’t one of those times; he was begging Lolita Firestone to come back to Hollywood.

By phone she told a dithering Marco Chappo, We just don’t rhyme.

Chapter 2

Miles Zusman received a disapproving letter from Charlie Quakenbush at Arizona Republican Party headquarters, noting that two obstacles stood in the way of Miles being elected to Congress to represent his district and the great State of Arizona. For one thing, there were several Arizona natives who were Republican Party operatives in line ahead of him. Of special note, they had raised a lot of money for the state Republican Party and its candidates. The ability to raise money was the gold standard of politics, certainly at the state and federal levels. Secondly, Miles was involved in the real estate business, and a particularly shady aspect of it. Though a huge industry in Arizona, real estate was rife with scandal. Class-action lawsuits against timeshare companies were common. It seemed no one in the real estate business ever came away unscathed.

What’s more, Miles Zusman’s talk of eventually being installed in the Governor’s Mansion was regarded as premature, high-handed and distasteful.

###

Sissy Meeks wrote again to tell Lolita Firestone that several auditions had been lined up, two of them for supporting roles for independent movies by directors whose previous works had been featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Sissy Meeks was utterly perplexed why Lolita had left Hollywood for a small community in central Arizona’s high desert, and she was equally perplexed why she had not already turned the spellbinding Lolita Firestone into a movie star. She was the most magnetic personality in a business rife with magnetic personalities.

Sissy also mentioned the several phone calls received from mutual friend Marco Choppo, blubbering for her help in convincing Lolita to return to Hollywood.

###

To insinuate herself ever more deeply into the community, Lolita Firestone joined all manner of Sedona civic, cultural and artistic organizations, signing membership papers and paying dues to the Sedona Community Foundation, Keep Sedona Beautiful, the Sedona Arts Center, the Performing Arts Center, the ballet, Jazz on the Rocks, and the Shakespeare Theater. She even joined the Chamber of Commerce, though she did not own a business and had never even managed one.

It was an opportunity to understand how organizations attract membership, collect fees, write bylaws, hire and manage staff members, appoint boards of trustees, run meetings in accordance with Robert’s Rules of Order, interact with city government, achieve nonprofit status, avoid paying federal taxes, and generally accomplish the goals they set before themselves.

Joining each organization in tandem with her was Miles Zusman. He was useful to her in this capacity because Lolita needed a loyal and enthusiastic adjutant at her side, a person who had a vested interest in understanding the mechanics of bureaucracy and persuasion. Given the aspirations Miles Zusman held dear, it was time he started meeting people in bigger numbers. Not just any people — influencers, the kind of people who could do him some good when the time came. Not that that time would ever arrive. Lolita Firestone had her own plans for Miles. During the interim, he was a useful player on a chessboard whose rules were only beginning to take formation.

###

Marco Choppo sent Lolita Firestone a $1,000 cash infusion via PayPal. The money arrived with a notation that read: Consider it some earnest money to help you get by for the time being.

###

A rumor broke loose that Lolita Firestone was an assumed name. By now people were privy to her prior life as a Hollywood actress and that made Lolita Firestone sound all the more like a stage name. It was also rumored she was future heiress to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company fortune. It made the gossip column in the Red Rock Herald.

Lolita read it with bemusement and set it aside, remaining Zen-like on the matter, neither confirming nor denying.

Small towns, Lolita shrugged. I have nothing to contribute to this conversation.

The name never would have been an issue except that Lolita’s visibility and status in the community was rising meteorically. The people she passed on the way up were grabbing at filaments to drag her back down.

###

Miles Zusman was the top salesman that month in Highlander Hotels’ fractional ownership program. (Fractional ownership is what they called it to avoid using timeshare, which had become a loaded term for many discerning buyers and litigation-happy real estate attorneys.)

###

Miles Zusman sat down at his desk that night and went to work on some new position papers. He was trying to find the words to galvanize the Arizona electorate. He would do that by appealing to their fears, which was the best way to get people to show up at voting booths. Politicians had long since given up on the power of positive thinking. They didn’t give a shit what Norman Vincent Peale had to say about that. You could always count on people being pessimistic by nature.

There was plenty to fear — such as immigrants, taxes, overregulation, the repeal of the Second Amendment, watching the Social Security trust fund run dry, being the victim of a violent crime, homosexuals and the general coarsening of society. The antidote to all their fears was so obvious: policies such as low taxes and big prisons.

Miles also had some legislative proposals under development, including a bill to further promote solar energy, an industry in which Arizona, with all its intense sunlight, could play a leading role. He envisioned sprawling solar power generating stations in the state’s vast areas of open desert.

Solar energy could easily be deemed a liberal hobby horse, so the astute Miles Zusman went to work on another proposed piece of legislation that would make life more difficult for the homosexual segment of the population. That would not only counterbalance his liberal-leaning position on solar, it would also give Miles own sexual orientation additional cover, shoving it deeper into the closet.

With each thought and action of this kind, the real Miles Zusman became slightly more invisible.

###

Two women broke into Lolita Firestone’s cabin looking for scandal, or at least some reason why this woman was always so zestful and inquisitive. Perhaps some signs of sex and vanity.

There were no signs of either. No signs of ambition either. No neglected pets or shriveling potted plants. The place was immaculate.

Such factors and non-factors made it all the more curious why Lolita Firestone’s star had so quickly ascended in Sedona’s New Age community, causing a good deal of consternation among those who perceived themselves as leaders of that movement. Who was this woman with the fake name? What was she up to? Why didn’t she state her intentions? She appeared ready to do something with depth, but what? Where had this person of such verve and determination really come from? What was inspiring her use of all these numinous words and phrases? How was she able to profoundly express spiritual matters without over-intellectualizing? She expressed herself poetically, simply and understandably. There was no denying she was a fresh voice and vibratory presence, a one-woman impact site.

Lolita was drawing a lot of attention, almost all of it good, and that was a problem for some who believed they were being displaced. That is what inspired two of them to invade her home. They opened her closet. It was filled with skirts, blouses, bohemian dresses and dozens of technicolor scarves — the components of her signature look. Lots of blues, yellows, burnt oranges and blacks, along with turquoise and some verdigris. One of the intruders thought about stealing a couple of chiffon garments before realizing she couldn’t come close to fitting into Lolita’s dainty attire. Besides, that would have escalated their crime from breaking and entering to burglary, which carried a stiffer penalty.

The place contained little more than sage, food, herbal teas and toiletries. Nothing of value or insight. Yes, there were the metaphysical books from all the stalwart names, but everybody had read those. No special advantage there. Where was the writing on the wall? Where were the images on tarot cards?

Nothing sinister. The little twat was clean.

###

Miles Zusman was beginning to suspect that Lolita Firestone suspected that he was a homosexual. Why else would a single man not make even a single lascivious pass at a woman of her natural beauty and magnetism?

His sexual indifference was biologically unnatural. So was Lolita’s, Miles decided. She had yet to go on a date or even show interest in a man, or woman for that matter. Still, that didn’t excuse Miles’ emotional aloofness. Not a single sexual innuendo from him. All men dropped a morsel or two of bait, just to test the potential of a woman’s interest in carnality. It’s what guys do. Men liked using the innuendo because, if any offense was taken, their remark could be defrayed by simply saying, I was just joking or Don’t take yourself so seriously.

Chapter 3

Sedona was full of artists and galleries and art collectors. Miles Zusman attended new exhibitions and art openings with the assumption that galleries were frequented by people with money who might help fund his political campaign. He had read The Great Gatsby during his college years at Penn State and his big takeaway was this sentence from author F. Scott Fitzgerald: The people who gathered at Jay Gatsby’s lavish parties were agonizingly aware of the money in the vicinity and were convinced it was theirs for a few words in the right key.

Finding gatherings of wealthy people and trying to strike the right octave had been his modus operandi ever since.

Miles attended an exhibition featuring a new artist at the Fillmore-Ratzinger Gallery. No sooner did he grab a glass of wine, take a seat and start surveying the works, than co-owner James Ratzinger took notice of his presence and approached. As soon as James Ratzinger looked Miles Zusman in the face, he knew. Miles knew that he knew. Yes, Ratzinger knew, and Ratzinger knew that Miles knew that he knew. It was apparent from the oh shit look on Miles’ face.

A current ran through both men. It was just that quickly that Miles Zusman’s true identity as a homosexual had been unmasked. Ratzinger said nothing. Miles vaguely shook his head, as though making a denial. Ratzinger’s expression changed into a rebuke that silently said, We know our own kind. Ratzinger knew his quarry; you had to give the man credit for his instincts.

Miles thought he could smell bath oil on the gallery owner. Ratzinger gave him a devious grin. It looked like something carved into a jack-o’-lantern. Ratzinger had already been presumptuous, now he was graduating to obnoxiousness. Miles had to admit there was enjoyment in the discomfort being inflicted. Miles wanted to be repulsed but he wasn’t, and that might have been most disturbing of all.

Not another word was exchanged, it was all happening telepathically.

How could a chubby middle-aged man like Ratzinger even begin to think the young, svelte Miles Zusman would have even the most fleeting interest in him? Then again, taken from the neck up,